2013

Art and Visual Culture in History, Literature, and Society

CRHA Graduate Student Conference

April 18-19, 2014

Merced, California

The World Cultures Graduate Students, sponsored by The Center for Humanities at the University of California, Merced announces its Second Annual Graduate Students Conference to be held April 18th and 19th, 2014. This year’s topic is “Art and Visual Culture in History, Literature, and Society.” We are interested in papers that examine not only how art and visual culture reflect changes in society but also how art can change the course of human society.

Heritage and identity are produced through objects, images, events, and representations. Museums, monuments, public art, memorials, television images, photographs, landmark districts, and pageants are not passive containers, but are active vehicles in producing, sharing, and giving meaning to popular understandings of the past. This conference examines the broader concept of “visual culture” as it relates to the history of the visual arts but is by no means limited to the ‘arts’. The traditional expressions of the Arts and Culture such as theatre, film, music concerts, festivals, fairs, and the recent trend towards ‘creative placemaking’ will be supplemented by topics extending to how the production of all objects, artifacts and spaces both modern and ancient can provide a sense of community, identity, culture and heritage.

This conference will focus on four conceptual areas: visuality, identity, media culture, and politics/ethics.

The aim of the CRHA Graduate Conference is to facilitate the innovative scholarship of graduate students across the nation and globe by providing opportunities for them to share academic work, receive scholarly feedback and network professionally. The event also facilitates the integration of faculty, promising scholars and colleagues in an interdepartmental intellectual dialogue. The CRHA Graduate Student Conference is a unique opportunity for graduate students to present their scholarly work at UCM in a formal conference setting. All talks and panel sessions are free and open to the public. Please see our Conference Schedule link for more detailed information about this year’s conference (Coming Soon).